Spain 100 Pesetas banknote 1946 Francisco Goya
Obverse: Bust of Francisco de Goya. (Monument to Francisco de Goya by Mariano Benlliure in the piazza at the North entrance of the Museo del Prado, Madrid).
Reverse: The Parasol, painting by Francisco de Goya (1777).
Engraved by José Luis López Sánchez Toda. Printed in lithography and intaglio.
Watermark: Goya's head.
Size: 138 x 89 mm.
Quantity Printed: 29,850,000.
Circulation: December 30, 1949.
Printer Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, Madrid.
Spain Banknotes
1946 Issue
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Spanish Currency - 100 Pesetas
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era. Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He was also one of the great portraitists of modern times.
He was born to a modest family in 1746 in the village of Fuendetodos in Aragon. He studied painting from age 14 under José Luzán y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in 1773; the couple's life together was characterised by an almost constant series of pregnancies and miscarriages. He became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and this early portion of his career is marked by portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and Rococo style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.
Goya was a guarded man and although letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts. He suffered a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 which left him completely deaf. After 1793 his work became progressively darker and more pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels, and contrast with his social climbing. He was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France. In 1799 Goya became Primer Pintor de Cámara, the then-highest rank for a Spanish court painter. In the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1801 he painted Charles IV of Spain and His Family.
In 1807 Napoleon led the French army into Spain. Goya remained in Madrid during the Peninsular War, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he did not vocalise his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his "Disasters of War" series of prints (although published 35 years after his death) and his 1814 paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808. Other works from his mid period include the "Caprichos" and Los Disparates etching series, and a wide variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches, fantastical creatures and religious and political corruption, all of which suggest that he feared for both his country's fate and his own mental and physical health.
His late period culminates with the "Black Paintings" of 1819–1823, applied on oil on the plaster walls of his house the "Quinta del Sordo" (house of the deaf man) where, disillusioned by political and social developments in Spain he lived in near isolation. Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may or may not have been his lover. There he completed his "La Tauromaquia" series and a number of other, major, canvases. Following a stroke which left him paralyzed on his right side, and suffering failing eyesight and poor access to painting materials, he died and was buried on 16 April 1828 aged 82. His body was later re-interred in Spain.
The Parasol (also known as El Quitasol) is one of a cartoon series of oil on linen paintings made by the painter Francisco Goya. This series of paintings was specifically made in order to be transformed into tapestries that would be hung on the walls of the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Madrid, Spain. The tapestries showed serene events in everyday life, which made them a nice addition to the dining room of Prince and Princess of Asturias—the future King Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma. The queen called on Goya because she wanted to decorate the dining room with cheerful scenes; The Parasol and the other tapestry paintings were Goya's response to this request. The painting is currently located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid as is another in the series, Blind man's bluff.
On July 25, 1773, Goya married Josefa, the sister of Francisco Bayeu. Bayeu was a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art and helped Goya to secure his place with the Royal Tapestry Workshop. He designed 42 patterns in five years that would soon insulate and decorate the walls of the Palacio Real de El Pardo. This series of tapestries demonstrated Goya's talent enough to give him access to the Royal Court, and drastically change his career. Goya went on to expand his patrons and paint for many royal court members, such as the Count of Floridablanca, of whom he painted a portrait under commission. This all led up to the peak of Goya's career, during the reign of Charles IV, right after the French revolution.
In his paintings, Goya often joins French fashion to the Spanish one. The woman in this particular painting is sitting on the ground, possibly resting from a long walk. She is dressed in French style, according the time period. She is holding a fan in her right hand, while a little dog is cuddled in her lap. The young man is holding the parasol (umbrella) in order to shade the woman's face. He is dressed in the so-called majo style, meaning he is dressed like a poor person for the time period. His hair gathered in a net, and his belt is made of colorful silk. In the background we can see dark clouds in the sky and the trees swaying in the wind, possibly signaling a storm coming. The painting has very calm warmth it emits, which is then offset by the tree that seems to be blowing in pretty strong wind. The way the boy is standing, with one foot on the rock and one not, he seems to be triumphantly shading the woman from the harmful rays of the sun, and the possible storm.